


whatever you wish for you keep

by fangirl_squee



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, spoilers for all of hieron generally and spring in hieron specifically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:20:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24487315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fangirl_squee/pseuds/fangirl_squee
Summary: You can make wishes on anything, if you want to - shooting stars and sunsets and odd-shaped rocks. You can even make wishes without realising you're wishing.Or, Fero wishes for Samol.
Relationships: Fero Feritas/Samol
Comments: 14
Kudos: 16





	whatever you wish for you keep

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to madeline, for betaing, and for always being there in the dms.
> 
> title from 'A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes' from Cinderella

Fero looks up at the tall, tall tree above him. It looks much older than it is, as though it had been plucked from an old-growth forest outside of Rosemerrow and planted on the hillside overlooking the Last University. Apparently it hadn’t been there until a few days ago.

It hadn’t been there until they’d buried Samol.

Fero sighs, leaning forward to rest against the tree, squeezing his eyes shut as they began to prickle at the  _ unfairness _ of it. He’d gotten to see Samol, gotten to say goodbye, but part of him had hoped… well, a lot of people had left him and then come back again. He’d hoped that Samol had been one of those people. Wished for it, maybe, on one of the remaining stars as it fell from the sky as they’d sailed back.

Stupid.

His fingers curl against the bark of the tree, letting out a long, slow breath as he listens to the tree. It’s quiet, which feels strange - even young trees usually had  _ something _ to say. Fero presses forward in his mind, reaching out into the silence before he sighs, blinking up at the leaves. The tree doesn’t feel  _ dead _ , more as though it’s a heavy sleeper. Maybe one day it’ll say something, but it feels too tired now. Fero can certainly relate to that, after the day he’s had.

Fero pats the bark before he sits down on the cold ground underneath the tree. The tree stays silent, it’s leaves waving a little in the breeze.

“I can wait,” says Fero, his voice a little hoarse.

He can hear the distant sounds of the Last University below him, reminding him that he has to return eventually, to help with whatever the current disaster is. Fero swallows, closing his eyes and letting out another long breath, feeling the tree above him drift, it’s voice out of his reach.

  
  
  
  


Far above Fero, high up in the tree’s branches, flowers begin to bloom, small and green-white, out of season and not quite belonging to that particular species of tree.

Wishing does strange things.

  
  
  
  


He visits the tree early in the morning, before most of the Last University is awake. Sometimes he leaves things behind, a little carving of a sprangaroo, a flute, a bundle of dried herbs. Other times, there are already things left behind. Fero leaves those alone, and tries not to cross paths with anyone leaving them.

There’s quite a few people who leave things, more than Fero thinks even Samol would have expected. A small piece of bread from Hella, a broken guitar string from Lem, a quill and the burnt remains of a letter that he strongly suspects are from Samot, flowers from Benjamin and Blue J.

He doesn’t touch any of them, but he does like the flowers. He thinks Samol would have liked them too, brought back from whatever exploration Ben and Blue J are off doing in the woods, bringing back flowers and vines from much deeper in the forest than he’s sure Hadrian would have liked.

Some of them look enough like plants from the Mark of the Erasure that Fero’s chest feels tight, the memory of Samol smiling down at him as they lay together on the soft grass filling his lung, making it hard to draw breath.

Samol had wanted him to leave, to come back here where it was cold and people were miserable, where people made no attempt to talk to him other than to tell him what he was doing wrong. It had been the right thing, probably, but that didn’t mean it didn’t absolutely suck.

Fero reaches out a hand, tracing a finger over the air above the petal of one of the flowers. He’d stayed too long with Samol at the Erasure, but still. He would have liked to stay longer. He would have liked to stay his whole life.

Fero swallows hard, sitting back on his heels as the tree’s quiet branches blurr overhead. He feels a tear escape his eyes and he drops his head forward, scrubbing a hand over his eyes, swallowing around the tightness in his throat.

He gives the flowers one last look before he heads back down the hill. They’d be gone in a few days, but at least he could try to appreciate them while they remained.

  
  
  
  


Instead, the flowers take root around the tree, a bed of colour mixing with the new grass and spreading slowly in the tree’s shadow.

Fero dreams of it, before he sees it, the flowers spreading further and further, covering him, covering the person beside him. He can’t see their features, as obscured as they are, but he can feel the familiar smile.

  
  
  
  


Fero goes with them - to see Tabard - because it feels like the right thing to do. Hadrian keeps giving him odd looks, the kind people give Fero when they think he’s about to knock over something expensive, and Fero does his best to not take it personally. The guy’s under a lot of pressure after all.

That’s part of the reason he follows Benjamin, when he sneaks out towards the beach after he’s supposedly retired to bed. Fero’s not about to snitch on someone for getting some air, but he’s not about to let the kid wander into danger either.

Benjamin walks seemingly without a destination in mind, stopping every so often to note down something in a little notebook, or to pick up a shell or two, perhaps for a spell or perhaps because he is a little like Fero, pleased by the bright colour or a shell or the strange way the ocean waves have worn against a pebble.

He ducks behind a rock as Benjamin pauses at the entrance to a cave, peering into the darkness for a moment before he continues on. He pauses again at the second cave entrance, bending down to examine something in the tide pools with great interest before continuing on. Fero goes carefully after him, his attention as much on Benjamin as they are on his own feet as he picks his way across the rocky shore.

He pauses at the tide pool, quickly spotting what Benjamin had seen. Unlike Benjamin, he reaches into the cold water to pluck it out, rubbing it on his shirt to get rid of the film of algae. It’s a stone tile, the pattern of blue and green broken where the tile’s been shattered against the rocks.

There had been tiles like this, on an old altar of Tristero at the Erasure. They’d made up a little fresco of some fierce ocean battle, or that’s what Samol had said. There had been something in his eye that made Fero feel like he wasn’t getting the full story, but that Samol might still tell him, one day.

His throat aches sharply, his fingers tightening around the fragment of tile.

“Did my dad tell you to follow me?” says Benjamin, from behind him.

Fero doesn’t turn around, blinking quickly to clear his eyes. “A guy can’t go for a walk?”

“Apparently not,” says Benjamin, “Since you’re following me.”

Fero lets out a breath, standing up to face Benjamin.

“I’m just walking,” says Fero, “What are  _ you _ doing?”

Benjamin considers him for a moment. Fero laughs.

Benjamin frowns. “What?”

“Nothing,” says Fero, “You just have the same thinking face as Hadrian.”

Benjamin blinks, something in his shoulders loosening. He huffs a laugh. “Whatever. Are we heading back?”

Fero shrugs. “I guess I can cut my walk short.”

He slides the tile fragment into his pocket, his finger tracing along the edge of it as they walk.

  
  
  
  


The tide is higher than expected after their group leaves, unusual wreckage washing up along the shore - tiles, broken furniture, and old guitar.

Fero dreams of an old song, and it curls through his thoughts on the journey back, fitting in-between the rhythm of the world. He taps out the notes on his palm, finding comfort in the rhythm of it, though he can’t quite place where he heard it.

  
  
  
  


The tree’s gone when Fero gets back, something about a dragon, or a skeleton, or a skeleton dragon. Whatever it is, they apparently didn’t have much time to consider something as small as a missing tree, rushing around to prepare supplies for a journey to fight something that sounds too improbable to exist.

Well,  _ technically _ they don’t have time. Fero finds that he had some.

His feet take him towards where the tree had stood, looking down into the deep hole where it’s roots had been. He sits, his feet dangling over the edge. The soil feels cold and damp against his heels.

Fero flops backwards, the tangle of uprooted plants not quite as comfortable as the grass had been. He frowns, wriggling slightly to get comfortable, sending the smell of decaying greenery into the air. He lets out a breath, his fingers curled loosely in the plants beside him.

His eyes drift to the tree, lying on its side, its leaves already beginning to brown; its silence now is definite and empty.

“Sorry,” says Fero. “I should have been here, I-”

Fero closes his eyes, trying to remember the tree as it was, high above him, and his thoughts drift to Samol, a warm hand on his shoulder as he points out this or that to Fero while they walk, his eye crinkling with laughter. Fero can feel himself smile, too, at the memory of it, the sensation of it so real that he almost reaches up to his shoulder to take Samol’s hand.

Distantly, he can hear Lem calling for him, from the Last University, breaking his focus. The tree is as quiet as ever, the leaves unchanged. Fero sighs, pulling himself to his feet to head down the hill.

  
  
  
  


Seeds sprout in Fero’s pocket on the journey, weaving through the fabric of his sleeve. Fero keeps his hand curled around them, protective. 

Not all the flowers were uprooted when the dragon burst forth. They grow slowly through the dying greenery, their petals making small pinpricks of colour on the hill. They spread out around the tree, vines curling around the tree trunk and obscuring it from view, making it green again.

  
  
  
  


It takes him a while, in the Rhizome, to find his home again. Hieron is all jumbled up through the branches, making distance and space hard to judge and harder still to map out. He frowns down at the map Adaire had given him, scribbling a correction before he continues down a path.

Sometimes he sees things that used to be markers of being close to home, a particular tree or the curve of a cliff-face, but they’re never in the right spot, the space between each place stretched oddly, making a day’s journey into a month-long one.

He finds odd things on his way there, too. A chipped dining set with leaves painted along the outside. A little paring knife with a soft leather case. A flute made out of reeds that Safewater delights in the sound of.

He plays the flute as he walks, following the almost-trail of lost things back home. He’s not sure where he heard the tune, only that it seems to always be in his head, these days, making him think of soft grass and a warm smile above him.

  
  
  
  


Fero dreams.

The grass underneath him is soft and the sun is warm. He can hear the faint murmur of someone speaking, the tone of their voice indicating a question. Instead of answering, he rolls towards to sound, curling into their side.

He knows the moment the hand touches his shoulder that it’s Samol, but he doesn’t open his eyes. If he opens his eyes, he might wake up, and he wants to stay here, in the warm sun with Samol, for just a little longer.

Fero can hear the rumble of laughter in Samol’s chest.

“Well can’t fault you for that,” says Samol, “I quite like seeing you here myself.”

Fero’s eyes prickle and he presses his face to Samol’s chest. He feels Samol’s arm slide around him, and Fero lets himself be pulled close, his fingers curling in the fabric of Samol’s shirt.

“If I open my eyes I won’t see you,” mumbles Fero, “I’ll just wake up.”

Samol hums. “Might be right about that.” He pauses. “Might be that you see when you’re awake too, with how things are going.”

Fero frowns, looking up at Samol, blinking at the change in light. “What?” His fingers tighten in Samol’s shirt. “You tricked me, that’s- now I’m going to wake up!”

Samol smiles, his eyes crinkling. The sight of it draws Fero forward, wanting his hands to remember as well as his eyes do, touching his fingertips to Samol’s face. Samol stills, considering him. He shifts slightly, leaning over Fero, blocking the light.

“We all have to wake up some time,” says Samol.

He leans down, his lips barely brushing Fero’s. Fero leans forward, reaching for him-

And then he wakes up.

He blinks up at the sky, the sun just beginning to peek through the leaves. He presses his lips together, feeling the phantom tingle of the dream on them, his fingers curling and uncurling on the cold ground until Safewater insists he get up.

  
  
  
  


His home, once he spots it, is unmistakable. Maybe to other people the changes would disguise it - the way the mountainside slopes differently, the way the plants cling to the top of the entrance instead of the bottom, defying their previous gravity - but Fero can  _ feel _ it, the moment he lays his eyes on it.  _ Home _ .

Safewater lets out a trill, fluttering towards the cave and Fero races him, laughing.

Inside, the cave is mostly unchanged, as though he had just walked out the door moments ago, following Lem into disaster and a new life. The furniture he worked so hard to make is still there, the little trinkets along the shelf are only a little dusty, the cave walls glitter in the thin light coming in from the entrance. Fero laughs.  _ Home _ , finally.

The only difference is that where a side of the cave had been, there is now the smooth bark of the Rhizome. Fero puts a hand on it tentatively, inhaling sharply as the energy he can feel surging beneath it. He lets his eyes slide closed, feeling the pull of the Rhizome underneath it as the energy stretches through the branches, under new cottages and old settlements, under people’s feet as they explore this new world and back again.

He feels the sensation of someone behind him, the heat radiating from someone’s hand before it comes to rest on his shoulder. Fero wheels around, looking over the room. He’s alone, save Safewater hopping across his bed.

Fero rubs his shoulder, sitting down on the bed, his eyes still fixed on the smooth expanse of bark. Even from here, he can feel the pulsing energy of it. It feels like plants in the springtime, growing and stretching, magnified by a thousand. He curls his toes against the stone floor.

Safewater hop-flutters onto his shoulder, shaking him out of his thoughts.  _ Dinner _ ?

Fero laughs. “Yeah, okay. I think I still have some leftover bread from Emmanuel.”

_ Like him _ , trills Safewater.

“It’s good to have someone to keep an eye on Lem,” says Fero diplomatically.

Safewater tilts his head at Fero, and Fero laughs. The pulse of energy fades to the back of his mind.

  
  
  
  


He’s dreaming again. The grass is as soft as ever underneath him, but this time, he is alone. Slowly, he opens his eyes, peering around him. He’s on the hilltop outside the Last University, the space surrounding the hill is blurry, indistinct. The tree is gone, morning glory and ivy growing wild over the patch it had been.

He knows, the way you do in dreams, that there’s something under there. Something he has to find. As he pulls the vines aside a little, he can see a sapling underneath, trying to grow through the thick vines above it.

Fero reaches out to pull them away and the vines twist around his arms, pulling him in. It should be terrifying but instead all Fero can think of as they pull him under is how the vines feel warm as they curl around his shoulder, pulling him down, down, down. It feels like going home.

  
  
  
  


Fero blinks awake. There’s something curled around his chest, just as warm as the vines from his dreams but thicker, more substantial. He fingers fumble along it until he finds a hand, and Fero freezes.

“Uh. Hi?”

Fero hears a laugh, and feels it too, from where the other person is pressed against him. His eyes widen at the noise, a sound he hasn’t heard outside of dreams and memories for a long time.

“Good morning,” says Samol.

“It’s not morning,” says Fero, “Wait, how-”

He wiggles, turning around so he can face Samol, where they’re both lying in the bed. He squints up at Samol in the dark, trying to make out his expression. He curls his hands in the fabric of Samol’s shirt, feeling the soft fabric between his fingers.

“Am I dreaming again?”

“Don’t think so,” said Samol slowly, “Although I’ve been wondering that myself.”

“You dreamt about me?” says Fero, before he can help himself.

“I suppose I did,” says Samol, and Fero can hear the smile curling through his voice. “Quite a surprise, having dreams. Didn’t expect to be having much of anything.”

Fero fingers tighten in Samol’s shirt.

“Hey now,” says Samol, “None of that.”

“I don’t want to say goodbye to you again,” says Fero, “I- I can’t-”

“This isn’t a goodbye,” says Samol, “This is a hello.”

Fero swallows. He can feel Samol’s heartbeat under his palm, a steady pulse. His eyes prickle again and he presses his lips together, his throat too tight to speak.

Samol seems to understand him anyway, shifting to pull Fero closer, letting Fero press his face into the crook of Samol’s neck for a long moment, running a hand back and forth between Fero’s shoulder blades and making no mention of Fero wiping his eyes against Samol’s now-damp shirt collar.

Fero leans back, taking a shaky breath in. Now that he’s closer, he can see Samol’s face properly, the way Samol’s slow smile spreads over his face, making the corners of his eyes crinkle. The sight of it makes Fero lean forward, the way he had always wanted to, to press his lips to Samol’s.

He feels Samol smile against him, Samol’s hands resting on his sides as he lets Fero guide the kiss. Samol lets out a breath and Fero deepens the kiss, something bubbling up in his chest at the way Samol’s hands flex at his sides for a moment before Fero shifts closer.

After a long moment Fero leans back, one hand leaning on the bed beside them and the other resting lightly on Samol’s chest.

“I-” Fero wets his lips. “I kind of always wanted to do that.”

Samol smiles. “I know. You just needed a little time, and I had some.” He huffs a laugh. “More than I thought, as it turns out.” He pauses. “Might have to find a new hobby or two now that y’all have gone and changed things.”

“We could get your guitar back from Lem,” says Fero.

Samol hums. “I suppose. Might be nice to see the new sights. Travel a little.”

“What about after that?” says Fero.

Samol huffs a laugh. “We’ll figure it out.”

He leans down to kiss Fero again. Their bodies curl together on the too-small bed, hands tangled in hair and sliding under clothing.

“Yeah,” mumbles Fero, against his lips, “Yeah, I guess we’ve got a while.”

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi: mariusperkins on most places


End file.
